


Memory's Joy

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Batman: The Animated Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-07
Updated: 2008-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:12:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1640753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Father/son bonding sometimes needs a nudge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memory's Joy

**Author's Note:**

> Written for NutterZoi

 

 

Dick smiled, head laying back on the edge of the couch to look up at Bruce. The sixteen year-old had found an album of their first year, lovingly maintained by Alfred, and gotten caught up in the memories. Looking up at his father-figure's pride in those pictures, he fell back into the memories of that beginning.

`~`~`~`~`

_Five Years Earlier_

The Wayne Manor was a large, quiet place that felt about as much like a home as a museum might. Eleven years old meant not being afraid of the dark, or of the empty places, but it was a little overwhelming for Dick Grayson to adjust to. He had been raised in close quarters with his mother, father, all the rest of the circus folk.

Being alone was not something Dick found he liked.

He knew he had Alfred. The older man was always moving, full of activity for them both. When Alfred would drive Bruce places, Dick was allowed to ride in the front seat, even, unless Bruce was taking Dick with him somewhere, and then he had to ride in the big back seat. Bruce would smile at him, talk to him, ask him all sorts of questions, but Dick noticed a very slight distance, as if Bruce was working from a script, like the ringmaster and his patter.

It made Dick worry that maybe Bruce had only chosen to give him a break because he needed a tax write-off, like the kids at the home had said.

`~`~`~`~`

Alfred saw his first charge struggling to find the right way to fulfill his duties as Bruce Wayne, C.E.O., Batman, Guardian of Gotham, and as Bruce, the man with a young, traumatized child. The nightlife of Brucie, playboy, had been mostly discarded, for now, so that he had the time to try and reach Dick. Still, the aging butler knew the pair were falling short of a true meeting of minds, each a product of very unique worlds, bound by tragedy in common.

He resolved to find the way to slip across the social strata separating them, and let them find the comfort they both needed.

`~`~`~`~`

"He's eleven, Alfred."

"That is beside the point, Master Bruce."

"I don't know the first thing about how to ... "

"Then it shall be as good for you as for him."

Alfred put the package in Bruce's hands, and smiled. Bruce could only sigh and nod, going to open the package and look through it.

`~`~`~`~`

Dick looked up as Bruce came inside his room, and he quickly put down his pencil, more interested in what the man wanted than his pre-algebra homework.

"Bruce?"

"Dick. I've been thinking...you've been here almost two months, and we really haven't had a chance to know each other...outside of breakfast and trips to the social workers and such..."

"And?" Dick tried very hard not to get nervous. Was Bruce wanting to give him back? Had he decided that a tax break wasn't good enough to deal with having a young boy in the cavernous manor?

"I thought we might take in a Knights game, have a boys' night out?" Bruce said, without sounding polished or rehearsed at all. In fact, when Dick thought about it, Bruce sounded almost nervous. The boy bounced up and over, as Bruce spread out a jersey for him to see, from the local team. Blue eyes shone with excitement.

"I've never been to one...really? Honestly? You and me?"

That eagerness, that joy that seemed so much more natural than the quiet 'don't-let-me-be-a-pain' demeanor Bruce had noticed even before Alfred brought it up, made the man smile back, his body shifting to a very open stance. He was rewarded, when Dick's arms came up and around his waist in a warm, spontaneous hug...one he returned fully.

`~`~`~`~`

_Present_

"We were a mess, weren't we, Bruce?" Dick laughed softly. He fingered the cellophane covered photograph of himself and Bruce, in matching jerseys, coming back with sports memorabilia. "You didn't know a thing about sports, did you, before that night?"

"I knew the general idea," Bruce defended, but a lazy smile was resting on his lips. "If I remember right..."

"As if that perfect memory of yours ever forgets..."

"...you didn't know much more about the team, even if you knew the sport." Bruce managed to act as if Dick had never interrupted him, even if he had paused that half second to let Dick get in a smart-mouth comment.

"So?" Dick grinned irrepressibly. "Alfred so set us up for that, didn't he?"

Bruce considered not answering, dodging it, or just denying it playfully. But he looked at his ward, the boy...half-grown man now...that had come to mean the world to him. If Bruce ever needed one thing to show to the world and say 'this is my pride and joy', it was Dick Grayson, Leader of the Teen Titans, and Batman's Robin.

"Alfred always knows best."

"That's the truth." Dick studied the pictures a little while longer, memories of how that game had broken the ice fresh in his mind. Maybe, if it hadn't happened, Bruce never would have opened up. Maybe, Dick wouldn't have been trusted with the secret.

Maybe he wouldn't have ever been Robin.

Dick's body was never great at hiding the thoughts, the emotions roiling inside. In the moment after the thought passed through his mind, Bruce slipped off the couch and onto the floor, knees up and his arms out over them.

"We were meant to be partners, chum." Bruce gripped Dick's forearm with warmth. "One way or another, our paths would have come this way."

"Didn't think you believed in destiny," Dick challenged him, but his relief shone through in face and body both.

"Who said it's destiny? I think we're just enough alike, and just enough different, to be well-matched out there." Bruce then leaned over, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "But...capes aside, that's not where Alfred saw us matching."

"No?"

"No, son. When he gave me the jerseys and the tickets that day, he said this." Bruce drew in a deep breath and then imitated the precise, dry British tones. "'Master Bruce, even you are not so large an idiot to miss that the boy is everything and more you could hope for in a son.'" Bruce relaxed back down, and nodded. "Alfred knew, even then, what I had not yet recognized, Dick, what had begun the night at the circus."

Dick felt tears in his eyes, and blinked; he was too old to be a crybaby these days. "Yeah?"

"Yes. You, Richard John Grayson, may have had a father to be respected and loved, one I can never replace, but I still think of you as the son of my heart." Bruce shifted, arm going out around the young hero, and was rewarded with another, free, impulsive hug that never failed to reinforce their bond. 

 


End file.
